


a selfless education

by haillenarte



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 05:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haillenarte/pseuds/haillenarte
Summary: Written August 6, 2019 — August 18, 2019. Modern AU. In his final year of high school, Aymeric finds himself increasingly preoccupied with his piano teacher.





	a selfless education

**Author's Note:**

> This is a simplified version of a much longer OU fic I planned nearly two years ago. I was going to title it Lionheart, and it would have been the sequel to a previous piece of mine called Midsummer; it would have been an exploration of themes like religious guilt, moral struggle, interpersonal conquest, and "the way in which forgiveness is too much like love." But I no longer have the passion or desire to write anything so convoluted, and neither does the reader have the time or energy to read it.
> 
> Much of this is autobiographical, and it is nothing close to perfect. I hope you enjoy this typical love story.

His first teacher is an old nun by the name of Nelinnie. She smells too much of cinnamon, and she teaches him to read music on an untuned piano long consigned to the basement of the church; she always complains of being cold, though she is never cold enough to turn him away. His second teacher is named Pierryvain — a rakish and debonair young musician who clearly thinks himself too good to teach an eleven-year-old boy, but who nevertheless manages to impart his knowledge of scales, of music theory, of minor chords, of major sixths. His third teacher, Vellguine, is a no-nonsense man who is military first and a musician second, and from him Aymeric learns rigidity, thoroughness, precision, control.

Aymeric doesn't know that he's acquired a fourth teacher until he walks into his scheduled lesson one Saturday morning and finds, to his surprise, that Vellguine isn't there.

The practice room is as it's always been — a solemn white room with bare walls and a single window — but the man waiting by the glossy black piano is nothing like the mustachioed maestro to whom Aymeric has grown accustomed. This new teacher is blond-haired and blue-eyed. His resting expression speaks of infinite disappointment. He is soft-featured, strangely sorrowful, and too _young_, somehow. In the right uniform, he could be one of Aymeric's own classmates, shuffling quietly through the halls.

Aymeric struggles to see the man as an authority figure. His doubts wrestle with his manners. "Where is Vellguine?" he asks, a bit more curtly than he intends to sound.

Mercifully, the new teacher does not seem surprised by this reception, which can only mean that all of Vellguine's previous students have greeted him with exactly this kind of suspicion. "I suppose the front desk didn't tell anyone," the young man answers slowly, in a tone that conveys subtle displeasure. "To the best of my knowledge, Vellguine found a new job in Gridania. Friday was his last day here, and I was hired recently, so they gave all of his students to me."

Aymeric does not move from the doorway. He feels the corners of his lips curl into a frown.

It's nothing personal. It's just — this seems like the sort of thing that should have been done with student consent. 

The young teacher must be able to read Aymeric's furrowed brow for what it represents, as his expression softens, and he speaks with surprising frankness. "If you aren't satisfied with my pedagogy, you can always request a different teacher afterward," he says softly. Then he looks at his notepad, on which must be printed the day's schedule. "Your name is Aymeric?"

"It is," Aymeric answers, and relents. He walks closer to the piano bench; he sets his bag against one of its legs.

The blond man flips through a thin white packet, stapled at one corner. _Student files, _Aymeric realizes absently; upside-down and in reverse through the translucent paper, he sees blandly familiar headings: _name, age, date of birth._ After a pause, the new teacher's lips quirk ever so subtly. "Happy birthday, Aymeric," he says, and then puts the files aside. "Eighteen is a busy year."

“My name is Francel,” he says. “Come, let’s see what you were working on.” 

Aymeric takes his piano lessons at an establishment that bills itself as a house of music, largely because it is too small to be called an _academy _and only slightly bigger than what would be considered a _store_. Its economic success is a point of mild fascination for him. The proprietors offer lessons for a pittance so that they can profit more aggressively off the instruments, books, metronomes, and accoutrements that students must buy for practice and examination.

His grandparents have the wealth and means to send him to a proper school — and he knows one that would be open to him, he was briefly selected for a year's scholarship at the Ishgardian Conservatory of Music in junior high — but in truth, Aymeric doesn't mind. The house of music is not grand. It is so outwardly humble that his classmates at school would struggle to imagine him in it even if they saw him there — which, paradoxically, is exactly why he likes it. He does not like to be thought of as a man who must be surrounded by finery.

He has class on weekdays, archery practice on Wednesdays, student council meetings on Fridays, and piano lessons on Saturdays. It's nothing too egregious; other students have worse schedules. Sunday is his day of rest, but Aymeric spends it more often than not studying in his room at home, reviewing last week's work and preparing for the week to come. All of it now is routine. He performs every task given to him as well as he can, and that, he thinks, is enough for now.

Other students at school like to comment on how _effortless _he makes everything look — scoring well on exams, performing well in competitions, serving as student council president, being _handsome_, being _smart _— but Aymeric knows better. In reality, all perfection has its price, and he is no more mature than anyone else at his school. He has simply always been more interested in work than idle gossip, fleeting friendships, or passing amusements.

It isn't that he's special, though he knows everyone wants him to be. It's just that he's better, for the most part, at self-control.

"Good morning, Aymeric!" a Midlander student yells as she runs past him, chasing a friend who has evidently absconded with her bag.

Aymeric only gets a glimpse of her face before the two girls disappear down the hall. He thinks her name might be Aileve, that she might sit next to him in his honors physics class, but it doesn't really matter in the end. "Good morning," he replies calmly. She's already long gone, but he knows his voice tends to carry indoors, and she'll be listening for his response, besides. "No running in the halls."

Not everyone has the nerve to greet him so brashly. Stares and whispers tend to follow Aymeric as he makes his way through school, but he's gotten used to it by now. The conversations surrounding him are predictable. They wonder what the student council will do about club budgets this year. They discuss the passionate confessions he's had to turn down this week. They speculate about whether or not it's true that he has a secret girlfriend.

They wonder who he talks to now that Estinien is gone.

Their concerns are misplaced, in truth. Estinien's disappearance doesn't bother him very much at all. Aymeric has never been the sort of person who needs conversation to stay afloat — besides that, the idea of anyone choosing to be with Estinien for _conversation _is laughable. Aymeric isn't friendless without the local truant. He isn't looking for new friends.

Adults, children, teachers, peers. They all think he's nursing some sort of hidden sadness, some inner loneliness that will enable them to get to know him better, that will let them into his heart — but there's really no such thing. It's not that Aymeric is unwilling to open up about things that bother him. There's just no _reason _for him to sit around moping over Estinien's absence. At school, there's no shortage of things and people that demand his attention. At the end of the day, he goes home to his grandparents and his cat.

School isn't the same without Estinien, true.

But then, Estinien wasn't the same after Ysayle died.

After his first class of the day is over and the whiteboard is cleared, Mr. Outreguerlain stops Aymeric at the door. The literature teacher rubs his thin goatee in thoughtful contemplation, plainly unaccustomed to being any student's boulder in a storm. "I have to admit I haven't noticed anything _wrong _with you," is how he starts, which in itself is probably worth a mandatory workshop on grief sensitivity. "But I was asked to check in with you and make sure you're feeling all right. After everything that's... happened."

This isn't the first sort of conversation he's had to have with a teacher about his vanishing friendships, so Aymeric isn't bothered. "I can assure you that I'm fine, Mr. Outreguerlain," he says, pausing only briefly to brush his hair from his eyes. He keeps his voice jocular, even lightly teasing. "Who put you up to this?"

Mr. Outreguerlain seems relieved by Aymeric's levity, but that isn't a surprise: from the start, he was clearly uninterested in having a serious conversation about this topic. "Oh, I don't know — some of the other faculty members," he replies too quickly, which must mean that he's not quite at liberty to answer. "I heard this from the principal, but your friend — Estinien, right? — yes, well, apparently his father called. Said he's formally withdrawing from the school, and that they're moving away. On top of that, I understand you were close with the girl who died recently..."

This, Aymeric thinks, is where everyone has it all wrong. In truth, he was never especially close with Ysayle. Others would look at the three of them and assume, erroneously, that they were _all friends_. That they all liked each other, that they all knew each other. But he and Ysayle merely existed for a time in the same space. They were planetary bodies affected by each other only because they both orbited Estinien. And it was not that he disliked her — in fact, he admired her a great deal — but they never had cause to discuss anything _but _Estinien, the one thing they had between them. 

She spoke with him because he was Estinien's friend. He spoke with her because she was Estinien's — _something_.

If he were honest with himself, he would admit that he had every opportunity to get to know her more personally. To ask her about her thoughts, her hopes, her prayers, her dreams. He could have gotten to know her better. He could have considered her a friend.

It's much too late for that now.

"I'm fine, Mr. Outreguerlain," Aymeric repeats, smiling. "It's nothing I'm not used to." 

Aymeric's one secret is the coffeeshop he goes to after school. He's half-surprised that other students haven't already ruined the quiet of the place — it's a good place to study, though it is a little off the beaten path compared to the juice bars and bakeries that his peers tend to frequent, and he always takes a shortcut through the park to get to it, one that involves scaling two fences and hiking an unusually steep hill. The shortcut serves less as a time-saver and more as a deterrent: the stalking habits of teenage girls rarely lend themselves to feats of athleticism.

The barista's name is Gibrillont, according to the tag clipped to his apron, though he does not waste time on idle pleasantries, and Aymeric has never asked him to do so. He gives his order as usual — a solitary cup of cappuccino, a dash of birch syrup, with the rest at Gibrillont's discretion — then takes his seat at a table across from the window, fully intent on going over his classwork until nightfall, or whenever his grandmother texts him what she's planned for dinner.

He sets his bag by the legs of his chair, flips his textbook open to a random page. He locates the day's assignment, clicks the end of his retractable pen. Reflexively, he glances over at the window. 

Francel is there.

The blond Elezen is hunched over a notebook at the table across from Aymeric's, writing slowly in the light of the setting sun, the cup of coffee beside him half-ignored and probably cold.

Aymeric pauses. He has to wonder whether or not this is actually his first time seeing the man. It may very well be that Francel has always been sitting here at this time, in this cafe, and the schoolboy has just never before had cause to notice him. They were strangers only a week ago, after all, and the pianist does not exactly command attention with his presence.

It's odd. It's not as though Aymeric is a child who has never had cause to think about what his educators do outside of their working hours. He knows full well that his teachers are just people, people with their own lives and time outside of class — but he isn't sure, somehow, if he should go over and say hello to Francel. If the man were a teacher at his school, he would have no qualms about greeting him. But this is, in an absurd way, the first time he's ever seen a piano teacher away from a piano. His lessons at the house of music have always been otherwise completely detached from the rest of his life.

More than that, he's not sure that it's worth it to bother.

After a pause, Aymeric glances back down at his calculus assignment, which seems far more appealing than making small talk with a quiet man who did not leave much of an impression in their first hour together. He presses his lips together and begins unpacking an antiderivative; he resolves at the very least to be friendly, should Francel have cause to notice him.

But Francel never even looks up. He is engrossed in his work, in whatever it is that keeps him scraping at the pages of his notebook with the nib of his fountain pen. And as Aymeric finishes the final problem in his homework set, his cup long drained as he packs his things to leave, he finds himself wondering what could possibly hold the man's attention with such intensity for so long.

If the blond had not been writing in a single thin notebook (Aymeric reflects, his bag slung over his shoulder as he makes his way back home) then he might imagine that Francel, too, was working on a homework assignment of some sort. The piano teacher looks young — he's probably a college student, one with essays to write, and deadlines to meet, and perhaps a thesis of some sort to work on. But few college students would choose paper and pen over a laptop computer in today's day and age, and so Aymeric concludes that the writing was personal. A story, maybe. Perhaps the blond pianist fancies himself an author. 

He knows very little about Francel, and that's the way it should be. He has never known any more about his piano teachers than they allow him to see in the practice room.

But then again, the house of music has faculty biographies available on its website, and that's nothing he can't pull up in an instant on his phone.

By the time his customary Saturday morning lesson has rolled around, Aymeric is equipped with several new facts. First, Francel de Haillenarte is twenty-eight, a full ten years older than Aymeric, though he looks about two years younger. His undergraduate degree was completed at the city's most prestigious music college, which has apparently led him to teach at a dilapidated _house of music_ for a paltry 2,000 gil per hour. He has no publicly available career as a writer of any kind, or indeed any semblance of a career at all outside of the piano lessons. He could be a graduate student, but Aymeric didn't care enough to dig that deep.

Aymeric thinks of the hollow look in the pianist's dark blue eyes and concludes, rightly, that the man probably thinks of himself as a failure.

He's professional enough not to show it, at least, when Aymeric is playing for him, and he is pointing out areas of improvement, or areas where Aymeric has himself failed to meet expectations. "Stop there," Francel says softly, two bars into a movement Aymeric already knows he's gotten wrong: he's hitting the right notes, but the rhythm is off, the pacing jumbled into musical nonsense. "Take a moment and try it again from the top."

Aymeric's hands still on the keyboard. This particular piece has given him difficulty from the outset. He flexes his fingers against the black keys, trying to will himself calm, keep his frustration from bubbling to the surface. He knows how the harmonies are _supposed _to sound, but translating them from his mind to his body is a different problem altogether.

Again he tries the music — again he gets it wrong. He feels adrift, unguided, but Vellguine always made him find his own path, and he knows he should be able to do this. He should be able to to facilitate a breakthrough on his own. Vellguine would make him run through the entire piece at a plodding pace, slavishly loyal to the beat, over and over until he could do it at any tempo, any pace —

But Francel, instead, stands over Aymeric's shoulder, one hand poised several ilms above Aymeric's wrist before it halts in mid-air and he catches himself. "Excuse me." His voice tickles Aymeric's ear. "Do you mind if I touch you?"

It occurs to Aymeric that no one, ever before, has either had the cause or even thought to ask him that question.

"Go ahead," he answers, after a pause.

Francel's fingertips come to rest on Aymeric's knuckles, and then slide up his fingers, towards his nails. "The rhythm here is syncopated," the pianist murmurs faintly. "But I know you know that. What you need to understand is how it feels. Here."

With his hands atop Aymeric's, Francel plays, first, the off-beat rhythm on the left hand that is giving Aymeric trouble — then he adds the melody of the right hand, physically guiding him through the movements, repeating the same bars, over and over, until they are ingrained in Aymeric's memory.

His fingers are far more slender than Aymeric's. His nails are pink, flushed at their tips.

After another moment of this guided practice, Francel lifts his hands from Aymeric's, withdrawing them back to his side; Aymeric, understanding, plays the rhythm correctly, without Francel's help. It is easier now that he has the sense of it. With this momentum, the schoolboy continues playing. He takes the piece to its end.

Francel smiles, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "There you go," he says quietly as he settles back into his chair beside the piano bench. "There it is." The last chord echoes in the air. Aymeric folds his hands atop each other, resting them in his lap. Francel's warmth seems to linger on his knuckles, burning into his skin. He is, he realizes suddenly, rarely touched — he has not had his fingers guided like that since he was very young. He flexes his fingers, as if that might erase the heat from his skin.

"Might I make of you a request?" he asks after a pause, too stiff and formal, as if _Can I ask you something?_ is somehow beyond him. When Francel nods, he continues. "Could you play the whole thing?"

Vellguine would refuse, he knows. Vellguine was a man of staunch principles; he would give Aymeric such guidance only when he was well and truly lost, and even then, the former sergeant never played more than a few bars. He certainly never played an entire piece for Aymeric; Aymeric was never in need of that much guidance.

But this has nothing to do with _guidance_, Aymeric knows. They have already resolved the problem at hand.

This is something else.

Francel's brow furrows, but he nods without hesitation. Aymeric shifts on the bench. It seems unnecessary to stand, and strange to take Francel's place in the teacher's chair, so he simply perches at the end of the bench, tall and awkward, though he tries to muster a modicum of dignity as he watches Francel's hands settle into position, poised upon the keys.

After the first note, Aymeric knows that he will never play like Francel.

Of course Francel is a better pianist than Aymeric is — that was never in question — but Aymeric took the piece's fast tempo and dark tone as an invitation towards aggression. Francel, on the other hand, plays it with a kind of melancholy grace, a softness so easy that it melts away all tension. In one section — seemingly unable to resist — he improvises a key shift, a moment's hope, gone as quick as it comes as he slides back into the piece as written, but Aymeric feels certain he could have continued, and invented for himself a whole new piece.

His performance is tender and vulnerable. It is therefore inimitable. Aymeric can perform vulnerability, when it suits him — but not like this. Not at all like this.

Francel's hands come to rest, and the piano falls silent. "Did that help?" He laces his hands together, rests them against his thighs. "You don't have to play it like I do, of course..."

Aymeric isn't quite sure how to respond. "A little," he says, and he can't be sure whether or not it's a lie.

His teacher glances at the clock, and then the spell is broken. "It's twelve o' clock," Francel says quietly. "Keep working on this and the other two pieces. I'll see you next week." 

On Tuesday, Francel is at the coffeeshop again.

Aymeric completes a history assignment at the table across from his, but again, as before, Francel doesn't look up.

Friendships are made to be broken, in Aymeric's experience. There's nothing bitter or sad about it — the nature of living in a sprawling metropolis is that children are shuffled between classes and schools based on academic ability and the convenience of the administration. He forges transient friendships that must be smelted and reshaped at the end of each school year. Aymeric is an idealist when it comes to social matters, but a realist when it comes to interpersonal issues. He knows that goodbyes are inevitable; he knows that there is no particular value in chasing someone who always runs away.

They're not replacements by any means — he does not think of people so callously, so coldly, no matter what the rumors may say — but since Ysayle has left the world, and Estinien has left the school, Aymeric now spends more of his free time with Lucia and Handeloup. The two are his subordinate officers in the student council, though he prefers to think of them as his counterparts, and they collectively manage their office with a hyperprofessionalism not commonly found among high school seniors. He likes them both well enough — Handeloup for his unyielding diligence, Lucia for her sharp wit.

Handeloup has to go home early one afternoon, citing a perfectly mundane family emergency: his brother forgot his keys and is waiting at the front door to be let in, which leaves Lucia and Aymeric poring over new club applications, trying to reconstruct a database that last year's student council thoughtfully neglected. They're packing their bags to leave when Lucia's demeanor shifts, their conversation transitioning smoothly from the necessity of faculty advisers to something more vague. "You've been asked this too many times, I'm sure," she says, perhaps as a warning for what she must ask next. "But it is the talk of the school, so if you'll forgive me..."

She's unusually apologetic. Aymeric absolves her of her guilt. "I would forgive you anything you asked, Lucia. What is it?"

Lucia pulls the straps of her regulation-standard schoolbag onto her shoulder, glancing at him with an expression that approaches pity. "Do you know why Estinien left the school?" she asks. "Or where he went?"

He has indeed been asked these questions too many times, but it's easy enough to give her one answer, at least. "From what I understand, he's traveling with his father for the next two years," Aymeric replies, casually holding the door open for her as they exit their shared office.

There is much and more that Lucia could say in response to this, but she prioritizes walking towards the elevators that are conveniently located just outside of the student council room. "His father," she repeats, her voice carefully neutral as she presses the button to call the elevator. "Now that I think of it, I heard that you and Estinien were both adopted as children."

Lucia offers that statement as a fact, clinical and objective, but Aymeric senses a question in her flat delivery anyway. "We were, but we didn't usually speak of it." He steps past the elevator doors as they slide open. "It wasn't really the same. I was adopted as an infant. He shuffled through foster care until he was twelve."

"I see," his vice-president says, again sounding as though she is trying her damnedest to be impartial. Her odd restraint soon explains itself. "I can fill in the blanks for myself, but if you don't mind my saying, he didn't have a very good reputation. He had poor attendance and even worse grades. Why did you keep company with him?"

"He had his merits," Aymeric replies, after an enigmatic pause, because he has the feeling, now, that _He was my friend _won't suffice as an answer.

In truth, Aymeric doesn't know much more about Estinien than what he's said to Lucia. Of course he'd thought to check on his friend, that first week after Ysayle's death, but no one had answered the door when he stopped by after school. Patiently, Aymeric waited for the landlady's return and wheedled her into letting him inside, but by then, Alberic and Estinien's apartment had already been cleared out. The matronly homeowner said they'd simply paid for the month's rent and then disappeared — never mind their lease.

Knowing what he knows of Alberic — Estinien's Hyuran foster father, and an unconventional rambler by all accounts — Aymeric doubts very much that the two have left the country, or that their trip involves airship travel at all. Estinien and his adoptive father both hated airports, with all their rules and regulations, so they must be on some sort of road trip. The sort that would-be novelists like Francel write about, some life-affirming journey between father and son that will be rewritten as a screenplay and then released as a film. Perhaps, by the end of it, the untimely death of the son's first love will be nothing but a memory.

He can almost picture it: Estinien, leaning out of the window of his father’s pickup truck, silver locks tousled in every direction, light caught in his hair. 

When the elevator doors slide open once more and the school council officers step out into the hall, Lucia nearly collides with a svelte Elezen woman walking too fast around the corner. "Oh! So sorry, dear," the woman squeaks, her hand pressed against her bosom in a too-dramatic gasp. Her surprise is gone as soon as it comes; her gaze slides quickly from Lucia's neck to Aymeric's face. "Are you two on your way out?"

"Hello, Mrs. Timinne." Aymeric does not smile. "We were indeed."

His biology teacher has an off-putting sparkle in her eye as her girlish demeanor bubbles to the surface. "Well, I don't want to keep you too long," the woman chirps before Lucia can get a word in, "but since you're here, I did have something I wanted to talk to you about, Aymeric. Do you mind coming into my office for a moment?" 

Aymeric does not miss the slight arch of Lucia's brow, the narrowing of her eyes, but nevertheless, his vice-president takes a step back, half-turning her shoulder towards the doors. "I'll wait for you outside," she says curtly, which at least offers Aymeric an escape, if he needs it. 

The rest is predictable enough — the same routine, the usual song and dance. Mrs. Timinne is concerned for Aymeric, though only as she would be for any pupil under her tutelage, of course. She's heard the other students gossiping. Aymeric must be lonely after Ysayle died, after Estinien left. He must be in need of support. Aymeric, for his part, is reasonably certain that Mrs. Timinne would not pay such close attention to the personal affairs of a student who was neither attractive nor male.

"I just want you to know that I'm here for you," Timinne says softly, trying too hard to look at him in his blue eyes.

Aymeric's lips press into a thin line. He looks at Mrs. Timinne's hand as it rests atop his. Her hands are soft enough against his knuckles, but the tips of her long acrylic nails seem to dig into his wrists, and her wedding ring is cold against his skin.

He thinks of heat lingering atop his fingers. Pink nails, neatly trimmed.

"I appreciate it, Mrs. Timinne," he says smoothly, in his deepest voice. "If you'll excuse me, Lucia is waiting." 

Saturday comes as a relief. Aymeric likes his schoolwork, really — he enjoys being a student, he's grateful to be well-liked by his peers — but he has few opportunities, outside of his Saturday morning piano lessons, to shed his school uniform and all the responsibilities that come with it. He pulls on a plain black shirt. He slides his feet into white sneakers. His silk ties and crisp button-down shirts stay at home.

He hasn't spent quite as much time on piano practice as he should, and it shows, but Francel doesn't reprimand him for any clumsiness, doesn't guilt him over his faults. "Your fingering here," the piano teacher murmurs after one performance, "I don't think it's especially efficient. You'd be better off with something more like this..." 

The blond reaches out with a pencil, scribbles numbers atop the melody line in one particularly complex phrase. Francel always speaks so quietly that the scratch of the lead against the sheet music seems louder than his voice — and yet, Aymeric thinks, the issue isn't shyness; the man moves with too much unhurried confidence for that. 

Francel has a taste for fountain pens, Aymeric knows from his time spent watching his teacher at the coffeeshop. The pianist always uses one with a green barrel and gold trim. In class, the man prefers black mechanical pencils to wooden ones, and he annotates Aymeric's pristine sheet music with consistently crisp, clean lines of graphite, his numbers tidy and evenly-spaced, letters half-slanted and casually elegant. He circles notes that Aymeric tends to miss; he draws brackets to emphasize sections the schoolboy should pay extra attention to.

When Aymeric was younger, he hated seeing his teachers' annotations on his sheet music. They felt too much like corrections, highlighting his mistakes, calling attention to his failures. They demanded _better _of him, and _better_ was never enough. 

It's different now, of course, and eventually, Francel pulls back, gestures loosely towards the start of the sonata. "Again," he says. "Start from here, and try what I suggested."

Francel's recommendation results in a clean jump that works much better than the complicated thumb twist Aymeric thought he could pull off, but throughout their hour together, other pieces continue to be problematic. They move from sonata to rondo, rondo to folk song, and then to a different piece of music entirely. Aymeric's brought in something new to work on, a favorite ballad of his grandmother's, but the rhythm sways in a maddening way and he just can't quite get the sense of the melody. His fingers ache with effort. 

At length, Francel puts his pencil down. He stares at Aymeric oddly from his teacher's chair. "You don't really like this, do you?" he asks, after a long pause.

Aymeric assumes, not without reason, that Francel means the song. His eyes flick from the title of the piece to Francel's dark blue gaze. "My grandmother asked me if I could learn to play this song for her," he replies. "She's always liked to listen to me play. It's the least I can do for her, even if I don't share her taste in music."

"Yes," Francel says, maddeningly vague, "but you don't like it." He rises to his feet, and he's tall, when he stands; Aymeric feels suddenly too aware that his teacher's height is at odds with his youthful face. "Not just the song. You don't like this. You've never really been happy, sitting here at the bench. If it weren't for her, you wouldn't be taking lessons."

The schoolboy can't shake the sense that he's being judged. "I'll admit I was never interested in the instrument itself," he answers, after a long pause. "But I wanted to impress her when I was young, and she had so many favorite pianists..." His knuckles have gone white atop the keys; to hide his tension, Aymeric makes a show of stretching his fingers. "I don't hate _you_, if that's what you're suggesting."

Francel's gaze is unwavering. "But if your grandmother didn't like it, you wouldn't play at all."

"I suppose not."

Francel falls silent. His eyes remind Aymeric too much of the night sky. Aymeric wonders if his piano teacher is going to go on some artist's tirade about quitting an instrument if he doesn't truly love it; he wonders if Francel will tell him that he ought to put himself first, that his grandmother shouldn't force him to play if he doesn't want to, when in reality it's nothing so selfish as that at all — he's the one who's chosen to sacrifice his time for his adoptive mother's sake. He wonders if Francel will lecture him about _passion_.

But Francel does none of these things. "The problem with this piece is that it's too slow," the young man says, finally. "You like fast music — toccatas, tarantelles. You do best when things are tense, when they're urgent. But you struggle with anything that asks you for your patience, and you can't bring yourself to relax." For a moment, Aymeric thinks that will be the end of it, but then Francel _continues_. "At school, your classmates all think of you as a role model, don't they? They think you're calm, composed, flawless. And you're good at playing along — but at heart, you're impulsive. You're impatient. You're in a hurry to grow up."

Aymeric bristles, though he tries to restrain himself. He tries not to take offense, but he can't help feeling as though he's been _seen through_, that he's been _found out._ No one asked Francel for cruel accuracy. "Do you always psychoanalyze your students?" he asks despite himself.

"Only you," Francel replies, without hesitation — and Aymeric isn't sure why the lurch in his stomach leaves him feeling dizzy, why his heart feels like water in his chest. 

At school, no one needs to know anything that Aymeric's piano teacher might have said to him. The admiring stares and whispers follow him as usual, and not a soul knows that Aymeric was forced to pack his books and leave at twelve o' clock, feeling chastised and helpless, like a child. No fluttering first-year, no worshipful second-year can possibly know that he left in silence because he couldn't think of a single thing to say to Francel in response.

It shouldn't matter either way. He has never placed too much stock in the value of his pride.

During his lunch break, Aymeric forgoes the cafeteria in favor of sitting on a bench beside the courtyard. It's a relatively nice place to eat outside: a nearby tree provides protection against the sun, and the schoolyard itself tends to be dominated by boys in Aymeric's own year — typically the student-athletes, who are fond of using the outdoor space to get some practice in when they have free periods.

Across the courtyard, Zephirin de Valhourdin, who ran against Aymeric in the school council election, is eating lunch with a pair of boys that Aymeric vaguely recognizes as members of the volleyball team — Janlenoux and Adelphel are their names, he's fairly certain. He watches the two Elezen pass an apple between each other for some time; he wonders if this is how others used to watch him with Estinien and Ysayle, when they were all at school. Then he turns his gaze to Zephirin, and accidentally makes eye contact.

He expects Zephirin to simply turn away, but surprisingly enough, the green-eyed boy lifts his hand in greeting and then breaks away from his friends, for no reason that Aymeric can discern. He crosses the yard to Aymeric's bench. "Aymeric, do you have a moment?" the tall senior asks, hands in his pockets as he approaches.

Aymeric looks up. There's no bad blood between himself and Zephirin over the outcome of the election, as far as he knows, but they tend to run in different circles, and don't usually talk to one another. That Zephirin would approach him at all is out of the ordinary. "Of course, Zephirin. What can I do for you?"

The next words out of Zephirin's lips are not at all what Aymeric expects. "I've a message to pass on from Gibrillont, if you'll hear it."

Gibrillont. 

The barista from the coffeeshop?

"How do you know Gibrillont?" Aymeric asks, raising a brow. He tries to keep his face impassive as possible.

Being utterly expressionless has always come to Zephirin far more easily than it comes to Aymeric. "He's a family friend. My cousin Ansaulme helped him open the café." The blond tips his head to the side, and suddenly his cheekbones are thrown into sharp relief against the light of the sun. "You always go after school wearing our uniform, don't you? It wasn't hard for him to ask me if I knew you."

Inwardly, Aymeric curses his own lack of foresight, but it never occurred to him that Gibrillont would ever have cause to seek him out _at school_. "What's the message?" he asks, in as calm a voice as he can manage.

As if to affect utter indifference, Zephirin pulls his phone out of his pocket; he swipes left, taps once, and begins paraphrasing from his text messages in a quiet voice. "He wanted me to let you know that 'the boy by the window always gets a cappuccino, too,'" he reads flatly, "and that 'you're more than welcome to buy one for him, if you're going to look at him every day.'"

"Oh," Aymeric says. The silence that ensues feels strangely overwhelming. He hopes there isn't any color on his cheeks; he can't quite tell, as he's more preoccupied with the sinking feeling in his stomach. "It's not — it's not like that. It's — thank you. Tell him the sentiment is appreciated."

"Is it now?" Zephirin taps once on his phone screen — Aymeric wishes he would not — and begins typing a text message — Aymeric wishes he would not. "Well, then, it would seem I've wasted your time. I'll let him know."

The one thing, Aymeric thinks as Zephirin pockets his phone and walks away, the _one good thing_ about Zephirin being the messenger is that it's not likely this information will spread throughout the school.

Aymeric resolves to forget the incident. He throws himself entirely into his work, into answering questions and taking notes in class; he tries not to think about it, about how he must look to the middle-aged barista, staring day after day at the profile of a college student who never once looks up from his notebook. 

It does occur to him, as he himself fires off a text message to Handeloup about what the agenda will be for their next student council meeting, that everything would be different if Estinien at least had a phone.

He considers skipping his usual after-school coffeeshop visit, now that its barista has gotten entirely too invested in his personal life, but that would feel like _losing_, somehow, and while Aymeric is not typically competitive, he knows he would rather _win_. So he shows up, as usual; he orders one cappuccino, as usual; he takes his seat across from Francel's, as usual, and he resolves to let nothing change his routine, because he doesn't want to think of himself as someone who is easily rattled.

He's halfway through a fresh calculus assignment, paused only to take a glance at the nib of Francel's pen, when Gibrillont slams a heavy steel mug against his counter with an uncharacteristically loud bang — and then the piano teacher finally looks up. 

Their eyes meet.

Francel freezes in place for what seems like an eternity. 

Aymeric stays still in his seat, watching the pianist forget how to breathe. He thinks about taking a sip from his coffee; he thinks about at least moving his arm. It occurs to him, eventually, that he could defuse the tension if he just smiled and crossed the aisle between their tables to say hello — but the moment he comes to that conclusion, Francel stands, gathers his things, and walks briskly out of the coffeeshop, abruptly leaving his drink behind.

_Odd_, Aymeric thinks.

He wonders if he's expected to chase after the man. If he should act on impulse, and bolt from his seat, and discover something about himself at the end of the hunt. But life is rarely so poetic, and he's not sure, really, what would happen if he caught Francel; he can't imagine what he would do, what he would say. So he drains his cup. He thinks no more of it. He can feel Gibrillont's eyes on him from across the room. 

If Francel were anyone else, Aymeric would have to worry about being avoided. But he isn't concerned at all. The man is his piano teacher; their meetings are scheduled and paid for. No matter what happens at the café, or at school, Francel will show up for him, every Saturday, from eleven to twelve.

There's no reason to chase someone who always runs away, after all. There's even less reason to chase someone who can't. 

Aymeric doesn't quite realize how much he's looked forward to seeing the pianist again until he walks into the practice room and notes, with a rush of inexplicable satisfaction, that Francel looks _nervous_. 

They both know what they have to discuss. The schoolboy waits for the silence to turn appropriately awkward before he speaks, slow and calm. "Why did you leave?" 

Francel averts his gaze. His hands ball into fists atop his thighs. "I — I'd never seen you in your uniform before," he stutters, too quickly. He seems to realize only a moment later how that _sounds_, and he takes it back, but by then, the pause has stretched too long and the damage is done. "I mean — I don't know. I didn't recognize you."

Aymeric decides, very generously, to accept the excuse. "You didn't recognize me," he allows, unruffled. Politely, he tries a different angle of attack. "What are you always writing?"

"Letters to a friend," Francel replies, after a brief pause. The strangely empty look in his eyes is gone now, replaced with something like worry, or perhaps embarrassment. "But I can't send them — I don't have an address for him anymore. I guess they're more like journal entries. Letters to no one." He fidgets with the buttons on his cardigan. "How long have you been watching me?"

"I didn't notice you at the cafe until after you were assigned to be my tutor."

Aymeric knows by the way Francel's brow furrows that the pianist is smart enough to realize that's not a real answer, that by now that could mean anything from _a few months_ to _a few days_, but he seems to sense that it would be dangerous to continue down this path. He glances at the clock. "We only have so much time," Francel says, in what seems like a failed effort to be cold. "Take out your books."

Aymeric doesn't allow Francel the opportunity to retreat. "What happened to your friend?" he asks.

Francel surely knows that he can refuse to answer, that no one is here to force him to be honest with his student, but he doesn't seem capable of dismissing Aymeric's questions, or ignoring them, either. "Why does it matter?" he asks, looking faintly distressed.

"I want to know," is Aymeric's non-response. "Is he dead?"

"He isn't," the pianist answers, after a pause. His somber expression has returned; again, like when they first met, the pianist looks unfailingly disappointed with his life. "He saved me from being abducted when we were young. So I... I don't know. I was stupid. I always thought we would stay together for the rest of our lives." His jaw sets; a muscle pulses in his throat when he swallows. "I was wrong."

It's not hard to tell that Francel's interest in his _friend _was probably romantic; harder to deduce is whether or not his attentions were reciprocated. "That doesn't answer my question," Aymeric points out. "What happened to him?"

Slowly, Francel rubs his hand back and forth across his arm, fidgeting subtly. "He found someone more interesting than me," he says at last. "Figures, I guess. I'm not very interesting." He squeezes his own wrist, perhaps in an effort to self-soothe. "But that was ten years ago. He's probably still traveling the world."

Aymeric has developed a sense for what people want to hear from him, and while he does not often indulge it, he has learned by now that self-deprecation is typically a cry for attention. "I find you fascinating," he says, and again, he can't be sure whether or not it's a lie.

Still, Francel doesn't take the bait. He shakes his head, his eyes downcast. "You'll meet more people eventually, Aymeric," he says after some time. "Then you'll realize that I'm no one special."

As time passes, Ysayle's death feels more and more like a memory — something that happened years ago, and not just a few months prior. Aymeric's classes all seem to blur together; the days all feel the same, and his workload never changes in any significant way. The club budgets are settled without too much fuss, but now they need to lobby the principal's office for campus improvements. He has an essay due next Monday, an archery competition on Tuesday, three exams to prepare for on Thursday. He's had so much to do that he hasn't been to the coffeeshop in a week.

He's been thinking less and less about Estinien.

What happened to Ysayle was a tragedy, to be sure, but the more that Aymeric distances himself from it, the more he understands that his friendship with Estinien was always going to dissolve, one way or another. Their relationship was never likely to last outside of high school. Estinien would have not chosen the same colleges or the same universities as Aymeric. It was never Estinien's foremost ambition to do good for the world, or to serve society, and he never cared much for legislation, for politics, for peace, for war. They would have gotten into different schools, taken different paths in life, then slowly drifted apart.

And yet — in honors calculus, as Mr. Segaulyon lectures about integrals, Aymeric looks at the empty pages of his notebook and thinks about what it means to write letters to someone who will never see them. 

_Hello, _he writes into the corner of a blank page. _When will you return? _

His thoughts stray too often towards abstracts, especially when there are other things he should pay attention to; he thinks vaguely about the nature of friendship in the middle of Mrs. Timinne's biology class. Lucia asked him, once, why he even bothered to stay close to Estinien, and he hadn't answered because he didn't know how to answer her. Estinien was a good friend to Aymeric precisely _because _he wasn't like anybody else. The appeal of Estinien's friendship was always that he had never expected anything from Aymeric, and in turn, Aymeric expected nothing from him.

And yet.

Aymeric had never thought that _nothing _would involve this absence, this silence. 

Superficially, he's the same as always. Internally, he knows he's not what he should be. He goes to class, and he takes care of his extracurriculars, but he can't bring himself to play the piano. His grandmother must know that something's wrong, but she hasn't asked him why he won't play, and he isn't willing to tell her. He sits down at the bench of his piano at home, sometimes, but then he looks at the sheet music, and all the notes seem to blur. The only images that slide into focus are Francel's notes, his numbers, his words. Francel has left marks on all of his sheet music, all of his books. 

Aymeric thinks about erasing everything, every circle, every line — but that would be pointless, and he already knows that it would leave him with a sour taste at the back of his mouth.

On the one hand, there is the option of breaking clean with Estinien; Aymeric could accept that their story might end here and move on. On the other hand, there is Francel, whose idea of friendship involves spending day after day writing letters to a man who has undoubtedly long since forgotten about him. 

Estinien would never mourn like Francel, he knows. Estinien is not out in the world, now, writing poetry in Ysayle's name. 

And he wouldn't write to Aymeric either — or so Aymeric himself believes, until he checks the mailbox for his grandparents after school and finds, to his surprise, that there's something addressed to him in familiar handwriting, with no return address.

Aymeric's pulse quickens. He opens the envelope just a little too fast — the paper tears, but he pays it no mind. It's a photograph. Scenery. A grassy plain; a still body of water. Aymeric turns it over, wondering if there's a message. He finds seven words written in Estinien's untidy scrawl.

_Clearwater Lake. You would like it here. _

Aymeric rereads the message several times, and then wonders what he expected.

It's not that he's disappointed. Coming from Estinien, this is a grand gesture, an affirmation of their friendship. This is Estinien's way of showing, clumsily, that he cares. He knows this about Estinien. He, of all people, should understand this best.

But Francel would have sent a letter. Pages and pages of text, every word carefully chosen, even if Aymeric didn't have the time to read all of it, and ultimately consigned the envelope to his shelf.

And it's strange. He never had to think about it when the three of them were together — Aymeric, Estinien, Ysayle, three students so outwardly close and attractive that other students never even dared to think that they could be approached or interrupted by lesser beings — but even then, he knew that he was only this important to Estinien. That the most he could ever ask of their friendship was to be together in the transient present, a present that too easily became the past. Even then, he knew that he was worth only seven words scrawled on the back of a photograph, and sometime last spring, when he'd come across Estinien on the school roof resting with his head in Ysayle's lap, Aymeric had turned around, and left them to their own devices.

Even then, he knew that Ysayle was more important to Estinien than he would ever be.

Aymeric thinks about that for a fraction of a moment before he walks inside and places the photograph on his desk. He places his bag at the foot of the bed, then lets his head hit his pillow without first taking off his jacket. He thinks of the twilight. He thinks of stars. 

At eleven o' clock on Saturday morning, sunlight spills into the practice room, highlighting strands of Francel's golden hair, coloring his white shirt even brighter. Aymeric watches him through thick lashes; he looks at the man in profile, thinks of his slight frame hunched over the café table. 

"You're still having trouble with the key shift here, so I'd advise you to focus on this area..."

Aymeric is barely listening. It doesn't really matter anymore, he thinks; none of this will make any difference at all. None of this will dispel Francel's crestfallen gaze, the weary confidence with which he always conducts himself, as if he feels assured that he will never love anyone as much as he loves the man who left him for someone else.

If Francel were just another boy at his school, seventeen and friendless, Aymeric could surely save him from himself. But he is twenty-eight, and Aymeric is eighteen, and the problem with adulthood is that saving something always means losing something else. 

“This is my last lesson with you,” Aymeric says, in response to nothing in particular. “I spoke with my grandmother. I decided to quit so that I can focus on my college entrance examinations.” 

Francel doesn't seem surprised. He places his pencil on the piano's surface. “Oh,” he says, after a pause. “Congratulations.”

An unfamiliar chime sounds through the room — Aymeric is mildly startled for a moment before he realizes that it's only Francel's phone, which up until now has never rung even once during their lessons. Francel checks his screen, pitifully hopeful; he must be disappointed, as his face falls, but perhaps it's an important call nevertheless. “Excuse me,” he murmurs softly. “I just need a moment."

He takes his phone outside and closes the door behind him.

That leaves Aymeric alone in the practice room with the piano, his books, and all of Francel's things.

Francel's mechanical pencil is resting against the shelf of the piano. His cardigan is draped around the back of his chair. His notebook and fountain pen sit on the edge of his seat. On impulse, Aymeric pulls both into his lap. He flips through the pages of the notebook, where too many lines are packed with Francel's tidy print.

_...and I know it's all selfishness in the end, Haurchefant... _

Aymeric uncaps Francel's fountain pen. The nib gleams gold where it reflects the sun, ink-stained at its corners, delicate scrollwork embossed on its surface. He has no particular intentions as he presses its tip to paper, in the blank space beneath Francel's own words, interrupting an endless song for someone who will never hear it.

The lines of Francel's pen come out gossamer-thin.

_There are more things in life than love,_ he writes, _and perhaps one day you will forget those who have forgotten you. Perhaps you will be able to remember, without pain, those who were forced to leave you behind. Because hope is more powerful than fealty. Because there is always the chance that tomorrow will be a better day — and if there was ever a chance,_ he writes, his pulse quickening, the scratch of the pen against the pad growing louder in his ears, _if there was ever a moment, if there was ever even a single fleeting instant that you thought we could have been happy — _

— and then the nib scrapes against the paper, dry, and Aymeric stops. He breathes; he stills. He sets the pen upon the keys. Then he accepts that he can write no more, and closes his eyes.


End file.
